, though,« said Mrs. Tulliver, »for everything's
as nice as can be all over the house, and that watered-silk she had on cost a
pretty penny. Sister Pullet has got one like it.«
    »Ah,« said Mr. Tulliver, »he's got some income besides the curacy, I reckon.
Perhaps her father allows 'em something. There's Tom 'ull be another hundred to
him, and not much trouble either, by his own account: he says teaching comes
natural to him. That's wonderful, now,« added Mr. Tulliver, turning his head on
one side, and giving his horse a meditative tickling on the flank.
    Perhaps it was because teaching came naturally to Mr. Stelling, that he set
about it with that uniformity of method and independence of circumstances, which
distinguish the actions of animals understood to be under the immediate teaching
of nature. Mr. Broderip's amiable beaver, as that charming naturalist tells us,
busied himself as earnestly in constructing a dam, in a room up three pair of
stairs in London, as if he had been laying his foundation in a stream or lake in
Upper Canada. It was »Binny's« function to build: the absence of water or of
possible progeny was an accident for which he was not accountable. With the same
unerring instinct Mr. Stelling set to work at his natural method of instilling
the Eton Grammar and Euclid into the mind of Tom Tulliver. This, he considered,
was the only basis of solid instruction: all other means of education were mere
charlatanism, and could produce nothing better than smatterers. Fixed on this
firm basis, a man might observe the display of various or special knowledge made
by irregularly educated people with a pitying smile: all that sort of thing was
very well, but it was impossible these people could form sound opinions. In
holding this conviction Mr. Stelling was not biassed, as some tutors have been,
by the excessive accuracy or extent of his own scholarship; and as to his views
about Euclid, no opinion could have been freer from personal partiality. Mr.
Stelling was very far from being led astray by enthusiasm, either religious or
intellectual; on the other hand, he had no secret belief that everything was
humbug. He thought religion was a very excellent thing, and Aristotle a great
authority, and deaneries and prebends useful institutions, and Great Britain the
providential bulwark of Protestantism, and faith in the unseen a great support
to afflicted minds: he believed in all these things, as a
